1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the design of multiplexers, and in particular to the reduction of bit error rate in a high-speed time domain multiplexer.
2. Description of Related Art
Fiber optic communication systems are becoming increasingly popular for data transmission due to their high speed and high data capacity capabilities. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and time division multiplexing (TDM) are used in such fiber optic communication systems to transfer a relatively large amount of data at a high speed. In wavelength division multiplexing, multiple information-carrying signals, each signal having light of a specific restricted wavelength range, may be transmitted along the same optical fiber. In the case of TDM, multiple signals are combined by transmitting each channel sequentially in time over the same fiber.
Particularly, TDM has become the most effective solution to the ever-growing need for bandwidth generated by the growth of the Internet. Consequently, equipment providers need to cost-effectively increase the optical capacity of the transmission equipment in order to support the higher bandwidth.
Furthermore, a multiplexer (mux) that combines a plurality of data streams in a single data output is an important building block of TDM.
However, due to issues such as clock jitter, traditional multiplexers have a relatively high bit error rate (BER), and therefore are not immune to problems such as timing misalignment.
According, there is a need for optimized multiplexers operating with a minimized bit error rate.